Secrets of Stone and Sea, page 12
No. Nope, no, nope. Peter was not going to get involved with ghosts. Not again.
He started running and found Kai beside a crack in the stone. It looked like it had been there before, but widened with a mace. Thick, acrid smoke streamed from it.
“Think Dad’s down there?”
“Where else would he be?” Kai’s shoulders straightened, and he edged into the gap. “Come on.”
Down that way would be fire and danger. Stopping to think of a plan could only protect them. But Kai was already gone, so Peter sighed and climbed through, as well.
Beyond the gap was a dark corridor that smelled rank and sour. Ahead, yellow light flickered. Smoke fogged their vision.
Their footsteps echoed in the narrow corridor. Still, Peter could swear he could hear the sounds of people coughing and choking, suffocating in the narrow halls of the tunnel. And that sulfur smell seared his throat until he thought he, too, would choke, drowning on dry land.
The sooner they finished with this seal, the better.
They turned a corner, and stepped into an inferno.
A long, rectangular room, like an Egyptian burial chamber, met Peter’s eyes. Carvings covered the walls. Covered them. Symbols, lines, and squiggles were etched from floor to ceiling, all the way down both sides. Only the floor and ceiling were bare. A series of bronze braziers shaped like long-stemmed flowers were the only furnishings.
The lit braziers spiked high with flames, but they weren’t the only fires in the room. The walls were also burning.
Near the braziers, some carvings were gone, leaving only craters in the wall. But many of the other carvings were on fire.
And there was Dad, trying without success to beat the flames out with a jacket. The mace lay abandoned on the ground.
“Dad!” Kai rushed in, Peter close behind.
Dad looked at them, his face stained with sweat and soot. “No! Stay back!”
As soon as they stepped inside, a panel of stone slid into place behind them.
Peter’s stomach lurched. We’ve already made a mistake.
“Don’t worry,” Kai said. “We’re here to save you.”
Dad looked sad. “You’re supposed to be at home, safe. How did you even get here?”
“Sophie brought us. You shouldn’t have left us behind.” Kai turned to look at the walls. “The symbols aren’t Atlantean,” he said. “I can’t read any of these.”
“I’ll take care of this,” Dad said. “I’m your dad. It’s my job to protect you.”
His eyes widened, and he dived at the boys as one of the symbols on the wall glowed with fire and exploded, knocking them all back. Bits of rock and shrapnel flew everywhere.
Peter pushed himself up, spitting rock dust.
“Is everyone all right?” Dad’s shirt was speckled with small holes and gravel, all along his back.
“We’re fine,” Kai said.
Maybe he was a little dazed, but Peter found himself wondering how the Atlanteans knew Hoosac would have a history of fire. Did they know the future of this place, or was there another force that shaped each seal to match the dark history of the location it rested in?
Dad groaned. “You shouldn’t have come,” he said. “This room is full of black powder.”
“Isn’t that the same stuff that killed all those workers?” Kai asked.
Dad nodded. “Smell that sulfur? That’s it. Once I lit the braziers, the walls started to catch and explode. The whole room’s a death trap.” He put his head in his hands. “There has to be a way to get out.”
“There is,” Kai said. “We find the seal, activate it, and this all stops. Then we go home.”
If we don’t die first, Peter thought. More symbols were on fire. One was glowing bright, fully burning.
“Hey!” he yelled, and pointed.
“Oh no!” Dad grabbed Peter and Kai, and they ducked again as the next symbol exploded.
Shards of stone stung Peter’s face and the arms he raised to protect himself. When he lowered them, his bones seemed to melt. “We’re in trouble,” he whispered.
The last explosion had really spread the fire. Now most of the wall was ablaze. The next time it exploded, it would be bigger.
Peter shook his backpack. “I have water,” he said.
“I’ll look for the seal,” Kai said.
Peter and Dad rushed to the spreading flames. “Here.” Peter handed Dad his backpack, and Dad grabbed a water bottle as the fire spread to another symbol.
“Down!” Dad said, and they both fell to the ground. Rock shattered all around them.
But Dad was up in the next moment, uncapping the water and pouring it all over the fire. The fire didn’t slow.
“It must be the carvings,” Peter said. “They’re protecting the fire!”
“Down!” Dad grabbed Peter, and they dived for the ground again as another symbol erupted. The smell of burning sulfur stung the air.
This time, Dad stood up groaning. His shirt had been sliced with rock shards and singed with fire.
“Dad, it’s going to blow again!” Peter moved forward, to pull his father from the exploding wall, but Dad motioned him away.
“New plan. You stay back. Stay safe.” Dad opened another water bottle and attacked the wall again, with the same useless results.
This was pointless. They had no plan, no way to solve this. They were going to fail.
And burn.
“Peter!” Kai called. “Get over here. I’ll need to you to activate the seal as soon as I find it.”
Peter hesitated. He didn’t want to go anywhere near walls that could explode.
“Peter!”
Fine. He ran over to Kai. “Well?”
Fire reflected in Kai’s eyes, which flicked back and forth over the wall. “These aren’t words in any language. I can’t read any of it,” he said. “And I don’t know how it’s spreading. But, oh, man, it’s spreading fast.”
The wall exploded three times, raining shards of rock on their crouching dad’s head.
“You brought me over here, and you don’t have a plan?”
Kai stared at Peter. “You’re right. But I … I’m sure I’ll find a pattern. There has to be one.”
Kai pushed Peter to the center of the room and returned to examining the wall, hands fluttering over every rejected symbol.
This was not good. Both seals so far, Kai figured out a way through the trap, and Peter activated the seal. That was their job. But now, Kai was at a loss.
The fire grew, spreading light all over the wall. Dad retreated under another explosion. Kai yelled.
“I’m fine,” Dad grunted. “Don’t get any closer!”
“We have to find it,” Kai said. “He needs our help!”
Peter pointed. “Uh-oh.”
In the last explosion, some fire had crossed the room. Flames covered the first symbol on Kai’s side.
The explosions had followed them.
“Kai!” Peter yanked Kai away as the first symbol on their side exploded. Both boys fell face-first to the ground.
Dust filled Peter’s nose, musty and dry, but a welcome scent compared to the sulfur smell of black powder that filled the room.
The powder that must fill the explosive symbols.
Could it be that easy?
Trembling, Peter closed his eyes and stepped closer to the wall. Avoiding the spreading fire, he pressed his nose against the carvings. Yes, the sulfur smell was coming from the symbols.
But the seal wouldn’t have that smell, would it? Why would it? If not even the Sea could destroy the seal at Dogtown, then the seals must have been created to last. Peter couldn’t see why the trap would be set to destroy the seal, as well.
So, putting up with the bitter odor, he moved along the wall, smelling his way through. The seal had to be reachable. Humans had made this place. People, leaving a seal at a normal human height. It couldn’t be impossible.
“Peter, what are you doing?” Kai screamed as another explosion rocked the air.
The heat grew in the room. There must be much more fire now. Peter opened his eyes to a disaster. Fire almost covered the wall on the other side. Dad had backed away, giving up on trying to fight it.
On their side, fire had spread over half the wall. If all these blew at the same time, Peter didn’t think they’d survive the flying rock and fire.
He didn’t have time to stop and think this through. He’d act like Kai, and trust that he knew what to do.
After giving the other wall a quick look for any bare spots, places where the fire wasn’t burning, and finding none, Peter closed his eyes.
Don’t trust your eyes. Trust your nose. You have more than one sense.
Time seemed both too slow and too fast. Kai’s shouting seemed quick, frantic, but Peter felt like he was moving through a timeless zone, one where the fires and explosions were happening in slow motion.
The smell of sulfur faded.
Just slightly, but enough. Peter opened his eyes. It was mashed into the back corner of the room, and overwritten with other carvings, but he thought he recognized the binding symbol. “Kai!” he called. “Is this it?”
Kai ran over. “Yes! Get it!”
Peter slammed his hand onto the seal. That rushing feeling of release swept through his mind, stronger than at Dogtown or the ghost ship.
Images were pulled from his mind, like iron filings with a magnet. The Sea, rising from the ocean. Its attack on them at Gloucester Harbor. He felt as if the pictures channeled down his arm into the wall.
Then it ended. The seal activated, the fires in the room died, plunging the chamber into darkness.
“We did it,” Kai breathed.
It worked. Peter didn’t have a plan, but by acting quickly, he figured it out and saved the day. He felt like a hero.
Then, the seal sparked to life with the red-gold glow of flame. As Peter yelped and leaped back, it melted and bubbled with intense heat, like lava.
Peter just watched as the melting seal splashed with liquid heat, igniting every symbol along the back wall, and others besides.
“Peter! Kai! Get back!”
The air shattered with an enormous bang, and something huge and heavy crushed down on Peter.
Rocks rained into the chamber. They crashed and shattered with the sound of an ocean during a storm. The smell of sulfur rose with the dust around them.
And then, all was silent.
The ceiling had been shattered by the explosion. The clear light of the sun into the room replaced the red glow of fire with pure sunlight.
Peter groaned and pushed at the thing pinning him down. It groaned in response.
“Dad!” Peter struggled out from under his dad’s weight and knelt beside his father.
Dad’s eyes were closed. Dust covered him. Blood stained patches of his clothes red.
But he was breathing, and after a second, his eyes opened.
Peter looked around the room. “Kai?”
Coughing, from behind a boulder. Then Kai emerged. He had been farther away from the blast, and protected by the distance, but only a little.
And Dad had shielded Peter.
This is all my fault. I should have known the seal would blow.
“Dad’s hurt,” Peter called. As Kai scrambled over the rubble, Peter turned to Dad. “Dad,” he said, unsure what to say next. Are you okay? seemed laughable.
Dad coughed and looked up. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“A little battered, but we’re both okay,” Peter said. “What about you?”
Dad laughed. “A lot battered, I think.” Grunting, he scooted into a sitting position. Or at least, he tried. When he moved his right arm, he yelped.
He looked at his arm. “I think it’s broken.”
It certainly looked broken, bent in the wrong direction. Peter’s stomach turned.
“But everything else feels intact,” Dad said, patting his ribs and stomach with his good arm. He smiled. “And you’re both okay.”
Peter nodded, still feeling sick. Dad shouldn’t have been at Hoosac, and he shouldn’t have gotten hurt.
What had he been thinking? If he’d just waited a moment, he would have remembered that the seals self-destructed.
He’d failed his dad.
“I’m sorry,” Peter said.
Dad wiped dust off his face and then used that dusty hand to pat Peter’s shoulder. “Don’t be. I came to protect you, and I did. And we’re all alive. Now, come on, Rocky, let’s go home.”
Surrounded by blasted rubble as they were, the nickname, meant as a comfort, was anything but.
Peter helped Dad stand as Kai grabbed what was left of their bags. He handed one to Peter.
“The strap may make an okay sling,” Kai said.
“Great,” Dad said. “I’m not sure how we’ll drive away from here.”
“Sophie’s waiting outside,” Peter said. If she had just come in with them …
Then maybe she’d be hurt, too.
“Right,” Dad said. “Now,” he added, looking at the sunlight pouring through where the wall used to be. “Let’s find out where here is.”
With that, Dad led the kids out. They had to leave Grandma’s mace behind; they couldn’t find it under all the fallen rock.
It wasn’t a long hike to the borrowed car, where Sophie was waiting.
“Dad!” she yelled when she saw them.
“Just a broken arm,” Dad said. “You’re driving. Let me call a tow for Grandma’s car.”
As Dad made the arrangements, and Sophie sat in the driver’s seat, staring into the trees, Kai and Peter leaned against the car.
“We did it,” Kai said. He smiled, but his smile wasn’t as wide as usual.
Peter just nodded.
Once the tow arrived, they left for the hospital. With Sophie driving far faster than she normally did, it didn’t take long to get to the nearest emergency room.
But to Peter, it may as well have been an eternity.
CHAPTER 15
ANOTHER VIEWPOINT
PETER
Dad acted weirdly cheerful while his arm was set and wrapped in a cast. He had to have pointed at his arm and said, “I find this humerus,” at least twelve times, despite the fact that the doctor, a pained expression on her face, told him, every time, that he’d broken his ulna.
Peter didn’t understand it.
They returned to Seaspire and a downpour that was so violent it had turned the painted fish-man on the Fudge Kitchen to a streaky mess. Blue crabs walked the sidewalks like they owned them. Peter figured they kind of did now.
When they got home and Grandma wanted to know what happened to her mace and why a tow truck brought her car home, Dad just gave a half smile and said, “Ask the boys. I need a nap,” and went upstairs.
Kai pulled Grandma into the kitchen to explain the whole adventure, and why they left without her, and how Dad broke his arm. Peter was left in the living room with Sophie.
Sophie had also been very quiet on the drive and at the hospital. Feeling awkward, Peter said, “Thanks for taking us. Without you—”
“Maybe you would have been better off without me,” Sophie said. “If you had Grandma with you, she would have gone into the tunnel with you and maybe Dad wouldn’t have been hurt.” She rubbed her arms. “Or maybe Grandma would have been hurt. What are any of us supposed to do when faced with magical burning walls?” With that, she spun and went upstairs.
Peter felt like he was back in the cave, the oppressive darkness and the huge rocks pressing down on him.
Today, he was the one who did everything. He figured out the puzzle, and he found and activated the seal. But beyond noticing that the seal wasn’t laced with explosives, he hadn’t thought. He just acted, like Kai did. And, as a result, his dad got hurt.
Who would be the next one to get hurt? Sophie? Grandma? Kai?
Himself?
All Peter could think was, If I’d remembered that the seals are destroyed when activated, I could have told Dad and Kai to leave before the room exploded.
And if I hadn’t activated the seal, no one would have been in danger.
Why did the room even explode in the first place? Dad had said the seals were there to prevent a great evil from attacking again, the evil that sank Atlantis. That was the Sea. The seals were there to send it back to wherever it came from. So, shouldn’t they be easier to find and activate?
Peter understood the idea of protecting the seals. The Atlantean survivors wouldn’t have wanted the Sea to find and destroy the seals, like it tried to do at Dogtown. They would’ve placed traps to stop the Sea from preventing those seals from activating.
But moving trees didn’t stop the Sea from trying to destroy the seal; they just made it very hard for Peter and his family to find it and activate it. The sea serpent also seemed to be there to prevent humans from finding the seal. Although it later helped them, because they were kids, according to Grandma.
And those explosions … well, Peter didn’t think fire could stop a being that could control oceans and storms.
What if the seals weren’t there to stop the Sea? What if they had another purpose?
And what if it wasn’t good? Why else would the Atlanteans build in so many traps geared to stop people, not ancient sea demons?
What if Peter had caused his dad harm for no good reason?
Feeling and smelling like the cold remains of a campfire, Peter wandered into the kitchen. Kai sat at the table, stacks of papers around him. Grandma leaned against the counter, polishing the shield-platter. “I heard you had an exciting day,” she said.
“That’s one word for it.” Peter sat at the table. “Sorry about your mace.”
“I have others.” Grandma was quiet for a moment. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “Your father is an adult. He knows better than to rush into danger without thinking. He shouldn’t have gone without you.”
Peter just nodded and looked at the papers in front of Kai. They were Dad’s printouts, including the copy of the MacHale poems.
“Three down, four to go,” Kai said. “Time to figure out where we’re going next.”
